Anne Nonny Mouse:
“Way back on Halloween of ’91, we had a GIANT spider yard decoration whose body and legs were plastic garbage bags filled with leaves. GIANT spider was an impressive display, as it took up a huge portion of the yard.

“Orange garbage bags with pumpkin faces on them were brand-new on the market and quite a novelty back then; we had several of them dotting the lawn. We hadn’t raked up our carpet of leaves yet, so the kids could crunch through our yard on their trick-or-treating route. (No raking allowed before Halloween. Kids must be able to kick and wade through leaves while trick-or-treating; it enhances their Halloween experience.) Hubby had his usual gory assortment of tombstones and limbs coming out of the ground. All in all, our front yard was Halloween-ready, but we hadn’t begun to clean it up and put it to bed for the winter.

“THEN THE GREAT HALLOWEEN BLIZZARD OF ’91 ROARED IN!

“The day after Halloween, we got up, looked out over the snow-and-ice-covered vista, and found our whole Halloween tableau to be lumps of white under a blanket of snow and ice. As days went on and the sun occasionally peeked out and warmed things up a bit, we valiantly tried to uncover the Halloween decorations and do a roundup. We pulled and tugged, but Spidey was staked to the ground, and he was stuck fast; the trash-bag pumpkins didn’t give up easily, and neither did the tombstones. Our real pumpkins were frozen right to the front step, and after pulling on them, all we got were the little pumpkin hats, while the rest of the pumpkins froze fast to the steps, so encrusted with ice they looked like glass pumpkins. Sometimes we pulled and pulled and got a portion of the pumpkin bottom, but not the whole thing, and a pile of its innards were left behind, frozen to the steps.

“We wondered if we would be looking at Halloween decorations in our yard and pumpkin guts on our front step until spring thaw. Who wants a GIANT yard spider next to Santa in his sleigh? Who wants blinking red and green lights on the house with tombstones in the yard? This stuff might have been buried, but I knew they were there. There was no closure of Halloween for us that year; it just kind of lingered under a blanket of snow. A sodden mess to rediscover around Easter.

“These days, if we see a hint of snow in the Halloween forecast, we are outside picking up our Halloween yard schlock — and on our marks, set, and ready to rake. Those of us who lived through THE GREAT HALLOWEEN BLIZZARD OF ’91 grew wiser from our experience, and if I can help it, I’d rather not have pumpkins on my front steps and a Christmas wreath at my door at the same time.”

Live and learn!

The Cab Driver of South St. Paul: “Seeing the little snowflakes in the air here today on October 25th stirred memories of that day — October 31st, 1991 — when it began to snow, and I was busy telling my cab customers that day: ‘Ahhh, don’t worry about it. I’ve lived here 53 years, and I’ve never seen snow on Halloween that stuck. This’ll all be gone by noon tomorrow.’

“It is October 25, and I work in an office with windows on two sides — which is good, except when cars lurk outside with radios blasting so much bass that the windows pulse harder than any vibrator.

“Anyway, today:

“Co-worker: ‘Oh, no! It’s Snelling!’

“Me: ‘What’s wrong with Snelling?’

“Co-worker: ‘It’s gross!’

“Me: ‘Snelling [Avenue?] is gross?’

“Co-worker: ‘Yes!’

“I then got up to walk over, and saw the snow out the window.

“Never mind.”

Not exactly what she had in mind

SteveO: “My girlfriend, who I’ll refer to as ‘Rachael,’ works in St. Paul at a corporate office. She drives a Jeep Liberty to work and parks in a lot with a few dozen cars on a daily basis.

“One day a while back, she had a lunch appointment at a nearby restaurant with a former co-worker. She went outside to get her vehicle to drive to her lunch appointment, but for some reason her key remote didn’t unlock the door, and when she tried to unlock it using the standard key, that wouldn’t work, either.

“Fortunately we have AAA, and she called for assistance, then went into her office to wait for help to arrive. When the driver arrived, he called Rachael from his cell phone and asked: ‘Which one of the blue Jeep Libertys is yours?’

“That was the day she discovered that another employee owned the same make and color of vehicle as her own, with one ‘key’ difference.”

Small enough for ya?

Office Space Division

John in Highland: “The recent report from a person whose office was in a closet reminded me of my early days at the old Hennepin County General Hospital in the early 1970s. The hospital consisted of a conglomeration of condemned buildings that would later be replaced by the current Hennepin County Medical Center in 1976. Space was at a premium in the old buildings. When I started working there, the office space for the entire Respiratory Therapy department was a confiscated janitor’s closet. It would hold a maximum of four people for shift-end report. The rest of us would report while standing out in the hallway.

“Shortly after starting to work in the department, I was instructed by one of the ‘senior’ members of the staff to ‘Go over to the ward on 2-West and check the oxygen on Mr. Fish.’ I dutifully went to the ward and walked up and down the rows of beds trying to find the patient. After a period of fruitless searching, I went to the nurses’ station and told one of the nurses of my problem locating Mr. Fish. She gave me a look of disbelief, turned around and pointed at a goldfish bowl, which contained one goldfish and oxygen tubing bubbling away in the bowl.

“Needless to say, when I returned to the department, the grins on the faces of my new co-workers confirmed my navete.”

The signs on the road to everywhere said ‘Burma-Shave’! (responsorial)

Judy of Inver Grove Heights: “John in Highland reminisced about the Burma-Shave signs that disappeared in the early ’60s. I have a book by Bill Vossler called ‘BURMA-SHAVE: THE RHYMES, THE SIGNS, THE TIMES.’ It has the story of the signs and all the rhymes, and I enjoy reading them again occasionally.

“One of the main reasons that they were discontinued was the highways and faster cars. Another was the cost of maintaining the signs that were weathered and damaged by vandals and animals.

“Here are a couple you might enjoy: ‘THE MIDNIGHT RIDE OF PAUL FOR BEER LED TO A WARMER HEMISPHERE. BURMA-SHAVE’; and ‘WHEN FRISKY WITH WHISKEY, DON’T DRIVE ‘CAUSE IT’S RISKY. BURMA-SHAVE.’ Those signs entertained us for miles of smiles!”

What’s in a name?

Grandparents Division

Lola: “My maternal great-grandmother was called Cribble-Crobble Grosmama by my siblings and me. Whenever we visited her, she would put her fingers on our wrists and then tickle our arms all the way up to our shoulders, saying ‘Cribble-crobble, cribble-crobble’ while her fingers were crawling up our arms. How we looked forward to having our arms tickled!

“She lived in the smallest house I have ever seen. If I remember correctly, it had two rooms — a kitchen and a bedroom — and was out in the country in the middle of nowhere.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

More in Opinion

Many people read Christmas stories at this time of year. I read reports and studies to help me get into the holiday spirit. One caught my eye this week. There have been a lot of macro theories and studies over the years, half-baked as well as plausible, if not evidence-based, about what significantly affects the overall crime rate, both good...

TEACH AMERICAN HISTORY CBS “Sunday Morning” had an excellent segment on Pearl Harbor and the attack on Dec. 7, 1941. The curator of the Pearl Harbor Museum made a single short comment that was quickly glossed over, but I believe is of great importance. He stated that many visitors to his museum don’t really know much at all about World...

As those we elect formulate plans to address Minnesota early-education needs, one word should guide their thinking: prioritize. The clear priority for targeted investment should be the estimated 40,000 low-income children identified as “left behind” for lack of access to high-quality early-education programs. The payoff of prioritizing — in terms of human potential, subsequent learning and avoided costs — is...

Michele Kelm-Helgen and Ted Mondale and other appointed factotums of the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority could have been given a couple of tickets to the football games and I’m betting nobody would have squawked. They did some heavy lifting. They got U.S. Bank Stadium built. But the MSFA , ostensibly to entertain guests for purposes of marketing the building. Are...

MOURNING OUR CLASSMATES On Dec. 1, 2,000 hearts broke as we mourned our classmates (“Heartbroken’ school mourns two girls’ deaths in car crash”). Yet, as we struggled to support one another under the weight of our grief, we found strength in our community. To our teachers and administrators, thank you for giving us a time to commemorate our peers. To...

While much remains to do in his 12th and final year in office, St. Paul is a more vibrant place than it was when Chris Coleman was elected mayor in 2005. He last week announced his decision not to seek another term, deferring talk of a run for governor in 2018 for another day. His message to those gathered Thursday,...